The Pork Angel

My parents were divorced and my mom was out running the bowling alley every night, so I never learned to cook. It was the early eighties, and microwavable meals were new. I pretty much lived on those until I was eighteen. I was like a stray dog. So over the years, the women I've dated who could cook were different. Special. They nurtured me. Even if their cooking wasn't good, it was wonderful.

Now I have a house out in the country with a kitchen that's just huge — too big for a man who can't cook. It has twenty-foot ceilings and a counter big enough to play Ping-Pong on. A few years and two girlfriends ago, this kitchen found its soul. Just before Thanksgiving — neither of us had anywhere to be — she proposed cooking a suckling pig at the house. This sounded excellent, but I had no idea what it meant, so I got nervous as hell. I went out to the house a day ahead and scrubbed the place like it was an operating room. Meanwhile, back in Manhattan, this living saint of a woman was beginning her journey. She bought the pig — she was the kind of woman who knew where to buy a pig — packed it in a bag with ice, and stuffed it into her rolling suitcase. Then she took the subway to Port Authority, boarded a bus for High Falls, New York, and rode for an hour and a half with that pig in the suitcase on a rack above her seat. When she stepped off the bus, I felt as if she were stepping off a plane from China with our adopted child. I felt like a father when the newborn arrives home — I should have hung a sign that said "Welcome Home, Suckling Pig."

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In the kitchen, all I could do was watch as she tore open the bag and started preparing. She cooked that pig until it was golden brown and the meat inside was like silk. We tore into it like coyotes eating a fresh kill. We ate the ears, we ate its face. We ate everything. I felt loved.